About the VCP7-CMA exam

My take on the exam

In my view, the exam was a fair reflection of the content on the Exam Blueprint and a vast improvement on the VCP6-Cloud exam I took 18 months ago.

Most questions were clear and concise, but as always, (at least to me) the phrasing on some of the questions made it clear that English wasn’t (necessarily) the first language of the person writing/posing that particular question. This made it difficult to answer a couple of questions with multiple answers but nothing to say other than that.

Having now taken three VCAP exams, personally I actually find the VCP exams to be a slightly harder exam to take. This is mostly because the type and number of questions you have to answer. A VCAP exam is a “hard” exam, but to me it is easier to take as it is more relevant with the labs and it is second nature to use the product.

Something to remember…

Like all VMware exams, it is difficult to keep up with the change in landscape of the product. This is why you now have a VCP6-NV (for NSX-V 6.2) and a VCP6-DCV (for vSphere 6.5). So remember, the current incarnation of the VCP7-CMA exam is designed against a specific version of the product, vRA 7.0.x. All the #awesome features of vRA 7.1->7.3 releases do not feature. My advice would be to make sure you download and read the PDFs from within the Exam Blueprint.

Exam Technique

Whilst not fool-proof a recipe for success, I tackled the exam in my usual way. Read the question, if the answer isn’t immediately clear move on. I finished my first run through of the 85 questions with about 30 minutes left and a good 20 questions unanswered and a further 20 marked for review. I then completed a 2nd pass of the missed questions spending a little more time on each. I finally clicked the End Review with 6 minutes left…

Why did I take the exam?

In my role as a Lead Consultant at Xtravirt, I spend a lot of time in the design and deployment aspects of VMware vRealize Automation. That is where my role tends to stop and someone else gets to do all the “interesting” extensibility stuff. Of course, when someone breaks something, I’m the one who gets a phone call to come back in to fix it. But that is the role of a consultant, so I can’t complain too much.

The plan was to use the exam to gauge my current level of understanding with the whole product and help identify any areas where I need to develop. Whilst I passed, and I’m grateful for it, I’m actually more grateful that it has given me a few areas to focus on.

Not surprisingly, the areas I most need to brush up on are the Extensibility, EBS and Blueprinting (inc XaaS).

So what Next?

Well, I am still looking to take my VCAP6-CMA Deploy exam (once VMware have sorted out the glitch in the matrix). Check out what is next on my Learning Pledge page!

Also I am speaking at the next North East VMUG in the UK on June 22nd so register today and come along to this Community Special and here me talk about VMware Orchestrator.